The Cure's Robert Smith says he 'disagreed violently' with Radiohead giving 'In Rainbows' away as a pay what you want download back in October 2007.

The 49-year-old expressed his strong feelings in an interview with The Times and hailed Radiohead's landmark experiment as an “idiot plan.”

He ranted: “The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want — I disagreed violently with that. You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all, and that’s nonsense.

“If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.”

Smith also expressed his disdain for illegal downloads, saying labels need to do more to protect their artists.

The singer continued: “It’s almost silly in a tragic way. There’s a strange reluctance on the part of the majors (to tackle it). Their artists suffer hugely from illegal downloading: they don’t sell legal units so the label doesn’t really have to pay them.

“But the label is owned by a parent company some way down the chain that owns the internet service provider. That side of it is very murky.”

(by Scott Colothan)